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Hamilton: Green jet fuel takes flight

Could a unique microorganism found in the waters of Atlantic Canada represent the future of jet fuel production?

That’s what Halifax-based Ocean Nutrition Canada is hoping to find out as part of a four-year demonstration project funded by Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC).

The company, which is the world’s largest supplier of Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, has discovered a kind of super-algae that, according to experts, is dramatically more efficient at producing oil than other types of algae being used for biofuel production.

How much more efficient? SDTC says the single-cell algae is 60 times more productive than other algae. Ocean Nutrition scientists happened upon it after a thorough screening of hundreds of different microorganisms. The company has since learned how to grow it and keep a stockpile in cryogenic reserve.

“We were looking and we got lucky,” says Ian Lucas, executive vice-president of innovation and strategy at Ocean Nutrition. “The SDTC program is focused on our ability to take this and turn it into jet fuel. We’re going to demonstrate the ability to grow the algae on a large scale.”

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Ocean Nutrition has partnered with the National Research Council, military contractor Lockheed Martin, and UOP LLC, a Honeywell company that supplies technologies to the petroleum industry. UOP’s job is to take the algae oil and turn it into a green jet fuel that can directly replace conventional jet fuel.

The jet fuel focus is a smart one.

Cars and truck and buses have the option of running in the future on electricity or green fuels as a way to wean off gasoline and diesel fuel. Gasoline demand for transportation represents 43 per cent of all oil products in Canada, and 46 per cent in the United States.

It’s doubtful that biofuels, such as ethanol, will be able to make a meaningful dent on that market. Most of the ethanol we get today in North America comes from corn. It takes a lot of energy to make it, and the idea of growing food for fuel remains highly controversial.

Affordable next-generation biofuels that use non-food crops and waste streams will come along, but momentum these days is clearly on the side of electric vehicles, which become cleaner as the grid becomes greener.

Airplanes don’t have that option. They can’t fly on electricity, and won’t in the foreseeable future. If we want to lower the carbon footprint of the world’s fleet of airplanes, the use of sustainably developed biofuels is pretty much the only path we have.

It’s also more realistic to think that we can make a dent in the jet fuel market. This summer, for example, jet fuel represented a more manageable 8 per cent of demand for oil products among OECD nations.

Serious efforts are underway. In the United States the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency – better known as DARPA, which brought us the Internet and GPS tracking – is aiming to produce tens of millions of gallons of algae-based oil each year at a production plant scheduled for 2013.

Boeing Co. recently said commercial airlines are on target to get 1 per cent of their fuel from biofuels by 2015. It may seem like a small figure, but that 1 per cent will demonstrate to the industry that much higher volumes are doable.

“We need to get to 1 per cent to get that foundation and then the trajectory will be significantly steeper,” Billy Glover, who heads up environmental strategy at the company’s commercial airplane unit, told Bloomberg News in July.

The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy are both testing green jet fuels on their respective aircraft fleets. The navy has committed to have at least half of its fleet operate on renewable fuel by 2020.

Here in Canada, there appears to be recognition – at least based on recently announced SDTC projects – that green jet fuel is a huge niche worth pursuing. In addition to the Ocean Nutrition project, SDTC is also funding a project led by Saskatoon-based biosciences firm Targeted Growth Canada.

The company and its partners, including Bombardier Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney Canada and once again Honeywell’s UOP LLC, will convert camelina oil into jet fuel with the promise of an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Camelina is a hardy oilseed crop that grows well on dry, marginal land, so using it in this way isn’t considered direct competition with food.

The first Canadian test of this camelina-based jet fuel will be in Toronto in early 2012 when Porter Airlines, another partner in the project, will fly one of its Bombardier Q400 turboprop planes out of the island airport.

It’s one of many crucial steps that could lead to big change in the aviation industry.

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